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Test Kitchen Before-and-After

In our February 2012 issue we featured the new experimental test kitchen and dining space of Tasting Table, a daily email service that serves up food and drink news from across the country.

Everyone involved had strong ideas about what an ideal kitchen should contain, how it should be laid out, and what materials work best. Everyone gave their input over the four-month design and six-week construction process.

The builders value-engineered the project to maximize the limited budget. They usually have very high-end clients but they embraced this project because they were excited to help build a space for the next generation of chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers.

Here's a view of the 2,200-square-foot space before the renovation and afterwards...

Clever (and inexpensive!) lighting helped transform the space. Says Bartakovics: "Custom lighting displays are expensive so we chose to put our money into the hanging lighting in the center of the space and then got creative with back lighting the bar area with clip lights and rope light from Home Depot."

The kitchen is kitted out with all the latest goods, including appliances from Magimix and Jenn-Air, bakeware by Revol, gadgets by Polyscience, and barware by Speiglau.

The team sourced vintage furniture from auctions, ebay and Craigslist and had them reupholstered to achieve a uniform look and bring them back to life.

They kept the original hardwood floors in the dining area, but brought them up to date with a deep indigo stain and a sturdy Minwax finish.

A wall of midcentury modern storage transforms a stark wall of exposed brick. Says Bartakovics, "The counter of our vintage wet bar was a wreck, but rather than spending $1,200 on refinishing, we got a piece of smoked glass for $150 to put on top. Not only does it make a gorgeous, serviceable counter, it also creates another reflective surface for an otherwise dark space."

Everyone involved had strong ideas about what an ideal kitchen should contain, how it should be laid out, and what materials work best. Everyone gave their input over the four-month design and six-week construction process.

CEO Geoff Bartakovics was interested in creating a "physical manifestation" of his heretofore exclusively digital company. So he bought a 2,200-square-foot space in an old live-work building in SoHo and hired designers Eric Cheong and Loren Daye (both formerly of Roman & Williams) and fabricators Tribeca Builders to do a gut renovation to transform it into a test kitchen and private event space. By being smart and crafty; buying materials and furniture on eBay, Craigslist, and at auctions; and embracing the rawness of the space rather than trying to cover it up, they were able to do the entire renovation for $300,000—$150,000 less than originally projected. Here's a look at the transformed space, as well as some before-and-after photos that show how far it's come.